


San Francisco Dues

by aralias



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-20
Updated: 2011-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-18 10:46:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unfortunately for the Doctor, he had been to San Francisco on the eve of the millennium before the TARDIS “crash-landed” there - though, due to regeneration trauma, he no longer remembered it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	San Francisco Dues

Unfortunately for the Doctor, he had been to San Francisco on the eve of the millennium before the TARDIS “crash-landed” there - though, due to regeneration trauma, he no longer remembered it. This was one of the reasons the Master had chosen the city and the time. Slithering through the TARDIS’s components, he’d flicked through reams of locations and selected one the Doctor was largely unfamiliar with, one he had gone to alone (the tagalongs, in this case, having gone to a spa where it was hoped they would wash away some unpleasant experience) and one at which it was likely the Doctor would be feeling relatively well inclined towards his sometime nemesis.

At the same (actual) time the version of the Doctor that coincided with the Master was stumbling around Rassilon-knew-where on a post-regenerative high, the fifth Doctor was taking in the city’s various museums and surreptitiously altering the more erroneous display cards. The Master didn’t know this, of course, but he knew what time the Doctor was due to return to his TARDIS.

The Doctor, for his part, had spent a rather dull morning, staying out of trouble, because he had promised Tegan he would and would be able to prove it. To that effect, he carried in his right hand pocket two souvenir pencils and a Polaroid photograph a nice lady had taken of him being thrown out the Legion of Honour. Being ejected wasn’t the same as being arrested, and the Doctor hoped Tegan would appreciate that, because it had been the highlight of his day thus far.

His quiet afternoon had afforded him time to think about things he typically avoided thinking about. Thus far he had been forced to think about Nyssa (if she was all right), the mould in the second floor bathroom, Turlough (and whether he ought to say something to the boy about… well, anything), and the Master (in general). He had concluded that Nyssa might well not be all right because Terminus was a very dangerous place; that he probably ought to speak to Turlough, but that he didn’t want to and therefore wasn’t going to; and that he had — all of him — been rather unfair to the Master in the Death Zone. The Master had, after all, been trying to help… in his own way. Perhaps, the Doctor thought, he ought to apologise. Perhaps the Master would have appreciated a souvenir mug. Then again, he thought, kicking a stone so it skittered down the sidewalk, perhaps not. The mould (which was pink and had apparently spoken to Turlough once) defied explanation or conclusion, but the Doctor was confident that he would forget about again soon.

He caught up with his stone and kicked it again, sending it straight into another man’s shiny black shoe.

The Doctor looked up, with the intention of apologising, and instead said, “Ah, it’s you,” because it was the Master, in a pair of sunglasses and a long, leather coat and the slight chronological inconsistency that suggested he was from the wrong time line. “Listen,” the Doctor said, as the unfamiliar face broke into a smile and the Master swept the stone out of the way with his foot and strode forwards, “I’ve been meaning to-”

Three more strides had carried the Master to the parameters of the Doctor’s personal space, where he typically stopped to leer. That, the Doctor had been prepared for. But, as the words _‘meaning to_ ’ had faltered on his lips, the Master had stepped beyond those parameters, seized the Doctor’s face and pulled him roughly into a kiss. The Doctor’s hands hung stupidly in mid-air, half way between movements, as he tried to work out what to do.

Kissing or, in this case, being kissed by a paradox felt a lot like being drunk. The Doctor tried not to get drunk very often, because it led to fuzzy thinking, which, in turn, led to him not being able to work out what to do when a version of the Master, who shouldn’t even be here, accosted him in the street.

The last part of this thought was processed by the part of his time-addled brain that wasn’t busy noticing the unfamiliar feel of the Master’s clean shaven skin against his own. Two (for the sake of argument) men (for the sake of argument) _kissing_ in the street was not illegal in this time and place, but it wouldn’t be unremarkable for another three thousand years. Even then, the Doctor felt reasonably sure that, in his right mind, he would find this sort of behaviour unacceptable. His hands chose a movement: he grasped the Master’s collar and tugged him down into the alley in which he’d left the TARDIS.

There didn’t seem to be anyone around, which was fortunate because the Master appeared to have taken the move as encouragement. It was possible, the Doctor thought as his coat was pushed from his shoulders, that this something to do with the way he’d pulled the Master into this alley with him, without breaking their kiss. Possibly.

He let the Master pull his jumper over his head, despite the break this necessitated. He pulled the Master back against the nearest wall, the uneven brick rubbing uncomfortably against his back through his thin shirt. The disjointed time-field was making him dizzy, like a good champagne, and it had been some time since he’d had champagne of any sort. His braces were off now and it felt like his trousers were pooling round his ankles.

The Master kissed his way down the Doctor’s chin and his neck; the Doctor too giddy to do much more than gasp as the Master knelt and pressed him back against the wall, took the Doctor’s cock in his mouth. He was still wearing his sunglasses, the Doctor noticed absently, as steady heat flooded through his body. The glasses clicked between the Doctor’s stomach and the Master’s face as he moved. His mouth was warm and wet and his tongue slithered busily around inside it. The Doctor, already mostly gone from the first kiss, came quickly, hands clenching around the Master’s broad shoulders.

“Hmm,” the Master said, drawing back with a dangerously pleased expression, as the Doctor sank down the wall. He stood, assessed the Doctor. “You know, I’m almost sorry.” He had a surprising American accent this time. Surprising not because it was American, though, like the Doctor, he had always favoured a British accent in the past, but because it was only as this unfamiliar voice spoke that the Doctor realised it had not done so earlier. There had been no verbal fondling of his name, no moral debate or exchange of banter — perhaps that explained why they’d managed to get to the sex this time.

“You're sorry?” the Doctor asked, because it seemed unlikely.

“For leaving,” the Master said and smiled. “Nothing else, Doctor. Remember that.” He pushed his sunglasses up his nose and, as promised, left.

The Doctor’s brain was gradually beginning to work properly again, and it pointed out that this was a fairly ominous farewell even from a man who dealt almost exclusively in the ominous. Before the Doctor could do anything about this realisation, however, the full seediness of his position came into focus for him: slumped on the floor, trouser-less, in a rather dirty alleyway, in the middle of San Francisco, having been sucked off by his supposed worst enemy. This, he decided as he pulled his trousers up, he would definitely not be telling Tegan. Hopefully she would be happy with her gift and his somewhat edited account of the day.

He reached for his jumper and then his coat, which was slightly further away. Some instinct made him check his right hand pocket for the souvenir pencils. They were missing, presumably lifted whilst the Doctor was… distracted. His Polaroid was also missing, as was (damn the Master) the nine feet of yarn he’d been collecting. The cricket ball was still there, but, perhaps most importantly, his TARDIS key was not.

Of course, there was a spare key above the P in ‘POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX’ and the Doctor let himself in, cut another key and replaced the spare before his companions returned. It briefly occurred to him that he ought really to change the locks to stop the Master getting in whilst he was out. Then he remembered this would necessitate a trip to Logopolis, which had been destroyed, or Gallifrey, where they would undoubtedly try to make him stay and carry out his Presidential duties. So the Master had a key to his TARDIS, the Doctor thought. How bad could it really be?

Eight hours or two hundred years later, depending on how you counted it, he found himself strapped to a medieval torture device, his neck craned at a painful angle in order to glare properly at the Master, who had, at last, taken the sunglasses off, presumably because they didn’t go with the ridiculous robes he was wearing.

Really bad, the Doctor thought, was exactly how bad it could be.

He considered shouting, _“You used me, you bastard!”_ or _“What happened to my pencils?”_ at his sometime lover, but thought better of it, because at some point Grace would recover and either accusation would be difficult to explain.

Both visits to San Francisco on December 31st 1999 had been fraught with mistakes. He would, the Doctor decided as the Master gloated, do better next time.


End file.
